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International Design Conference in Aspen Records
2007.M.7
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Title: International Design Conference in Aspen records
Date (inclusive): 1949-2006
Number: 2007.M.7
Creator/Collector:
International Design Conference
in Aspen
Physical Description:
139 Linear Feet
(276 boxes, 6 flat file folders. Computer media: 0.33 GB [1,619
files])
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
Business Number: (310) 440-7390
Fax Number: (310) 440-7780
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: Founded in 1951, the International
Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) emulated the Bauhaus philosophy by promoting a close
collaboration between modern art, design, and commerce. For more than 50 years the
conference served as a forum for designers to discuss and disseminate current developments
in the related fields of graphic arts, industrial design, and architecture. The records of
the IDCA include office files and correspondence, printed conference materials, photographs,
posters, and audio and video recordings.
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Language: Collection material is in
English.
The International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) was the brainchild of a Chicago
businessman, Walter Paepcke, president of the Container Corporation of America. Having
discovered through his work that modern design could make business more profitable, Paepcke
set up the conference to promote interaction between artists, manufacturers, and
businessmen. The concept behind IDCA was a direct continuation of the basic philosophy of
the Bauhaus, which also strove to improve relations between the worlds of art and commerce
by designing otherwise banal household objects, such as lamps, tea pots or weavings, which
could be industrially mass-produced.
Founded in 1951 together with its sister organizations, the Aspen Institute and the Aspen
Music Festival, IDCA was a direct outgrowth of the Goethe Festival held in Aspen in 1949 and
organized by Paepcke and Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago. While the
festival's immediate purpose was to celebrate the bicentennial of Goethe's birth, the larger
goal was twofold: on the one hand it was supposed to draw positive attention to German
culture, the status of which in the immediate post-war period was at an all-time low; and on
the other hand, Paepcke hoped to attract audiences interested in culture to the small town
in the mountains of Colorado and thereby bring new business to the area. The Goethe Festival
was an enormous success and even before it had come to a conclusion, there was talk of
sustaining such a gathering more permanently by convening on an annual basis. After some
searching for a topic that could tie these annual conferences together, Paepcke decided to
devote them to issues involving the relationship between design and commerce.
For the first conference convened in 1951, Paepcke enlisted the help of the renowned
designer and former Bauhaus master teacher Herbert Bayer, who attracted to that first
meeting an important group of businessmen, including Frank Stanton, president of CBS,
William Connally of Johnson Wax, Stanley Marcus of Nieman Marcus, Burton G. Tremaine of the
Miller Company, and Charles Zadok of Gimbel's department store. The design world was
represented at the first conference by such luminaries as Josef Albers, Charles Eames, Louis
I. Kahn, the architectural historian Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Leo Lionni, who was then art
director of
Fortune magazine, the architect and furniture
designer George Nelson, and Don Wallance, an industrial designer. The high standing and
ambitious character of this group of speakers and attendees set the tone for all future
conferences.
Over the course of more than 50 years of conferences, the IDCA gradually moved from an
audience primarily representing the business and design worlds to a largely design-oriented
group of speakers and attendees. Nonetheless, as late as 1996, when the conference theme was
"GESTALT: Visions of German Design," the president of Mercedes-Benz North America was one of
the speakers, as was the director of marketing for Bulthaup (kitchens). Similarly important
representatives were present, for example, at the 1998 conference on sport design. And as
the names of sponsors listed in the programs testify, throughout the history of IDCA leading
corporations in the business world were consistently interested in the ideas explored at the
conferences.
As for the design world, many of the most celebrated architects and designers (and
historians working in these fields) of the post-World War II era have spoken at IDCA, along
with a number of influential artists and theorists. Among these are Vito Acconci, Ron Arad,
Reyner Banham, Saul Bass, Max Bill, Daniel Boorstin, John Cage, Giancarlo de Carlo, Ivan
Chermayeff, Jay Chiat, Elizabeth Diller, Arthur Drexler, Peter Eisenman, Craig Elwood, John
D. Entenza, R. Buckminster Fuller, David Gebhard, Frank Gehry, April Greiman, Rene
d'Harnoncourt, Henry Russell Hitchcock, Ricky Jay, Sylvia Lavin, Greg Lynn, Richard Meier,
Richard Neutra, Elliott Noyes, Nikolaus Pevsner, Robert Rauschenberg, Bernard Rudofsky, Paul
Rudolph, Jonas Salk, Susan Sontag, Gloria Steinem, Robert A.M. Stern, Walter Dorwin Teague,
Bill Viola, Wim Wenders, and Lorraine Wild. A chronological overview of the conference
themes and speakers provides an excellent insight into the issues and major players at the
forefront of graphic, industrial, and architectural design over a period of almost 55 years.
The impact of computerization on modern design is also well documented in the conferences of
the last twenty years.
The last IDCA conference was held in 2004. In the following year, under the aegis of the
American Institute of Graphic Arts, the conference evolved into the much smaller, more
focused Aspen Design Summit.
Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of unreformatted audio-visual and
computer materials.
Contact
Library Reproductions
and Permissions
.
International Design Conference in Aspen records, 1949-2006, The Getty Research Institute,
Los Angeles, Accession no. 2007.M.7
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2007m7
Gift of The Board of the International Design Conference in Aspen. Acquired in 2007.
International Design Conference of Aspen records were initially processed by Sheila
Prospero, who rehoused materials and made a preliminary inventory in 2008-2009. Suzanne
Noruschat in the summer of 2010 and Natalie Snoyman in the spring of 2011 further processed
the collection as internship projects under the supervision of Ann Harrison. Emmabeth Nanol
completed the project in 2012. The descriptive notes were derived from curatorial
records.
Digital materials were processed by Jacob Zaborowski in 2017-18 under the supervision of
Laura Schroffel. Quark, Encapsulated PostScript, and Adobe Illustrator files were normalized
to .pdf and .jpeg for access. Original filenames were retained as labels in the viewer.
Selected audio and video recordings from Series I have been digitized. Access is available
on-site only:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2007m7s1_av
Born digital materials from Series I have been digitized. Access is available on-site
only:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2007m7bd
Selected audio recordings from Series II have been digitized. Access is available on-site
only:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2007m7s2_av
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Born digital content is made available through the digital preservation repository.
Material will be available on-site only. Access files from D29 are unavailable due to lack
of required hardware and software.
Series VI of the Reyner Banham papers in the Getty Research Institute (Acc. no. 910009) is
comprised of material collected by Banham during his long association with IDCA and which
served as research material for Banham's publication
The Aspen Papers.
University Library Special Collections, University of Illinois at Chicago also holds a
collection of IDCA records, probably acquired through Herbert Pinzke.
A small number of monographs and serials were transferred to the library.
Scope and Content of Collection
The International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) records document the activities of the
annual conference that, from 1951 until 2004, served as a forum for designers and business
leaders to discuss and disseminate current developments in the related fields of graphic
arts, industrial design, and architecture. Consisting of office files and correspondence,
printed conference materials, photographs, posters, and audio and video recordings, the
archive illustrates the governing ideas and themes addressed each year and provides
information about the individuals who participated in and planned each conference. While the
majority of documentation pertains to the IDCA itself, the archive also includes materials
about other organizations with which the IDCA was affiliated such as the Aspen Institute of
Humanistic Studies.
Records of the individual annual conferences comprise Series I. Documentation is present
for each conference, but the amount and type of material preserved varies from year to year.
Overall, there is abundant documentation of the planning and execution of each conference,
including materials relating to administration and finances, matters relating to the board,
correspondence, the development of the program and the attendees and speakers. The archive
also contains the annual press releases and press coverage for the conference. The
development of graphic design is documented in the printed material produced for the
conference (posters, programs, flyers, abstracts), which each year featured work by a
well-known designer. Most significant, however, is the documentation of the actual
conference sessions. Over the life of the conference, the initially printed conference
papers develop into audio recordings of sessions, first with sporadic reel-to-reel
recordings in the 1950s and early 1960s and then more consistently with audiocassettes
starting in 1974, and videotapes starting in 1986. Films, photographs, slides and digital
files further document the conferences.
Series II is comprised of cumulative files and miscellaneous material. These files are
cumulative in that they do not pertain to one annual conference. They range from office
files, predominantly vendor billing and receipt files, to attempts by IDCA to collect and
preserve its history. The material in many respects mirrors Series I, with groupings of
administrative and financial records, lists of attendees and speakers, board records,
programs and graphics. Of particular interest are the interviews with board members and the
inventory project.
Arranged in two series:
.Series I. Annual conference records, 1951-2004;
Series II.
Cumulative files and miscellaneous material, 1949-2006
Architectural design
Industrial design
Graphic design
Design -- Congresses
Video recordings
Magnetic disks
Motion pictures (visual works)
Slides (photographs)
Sound recordings
Photographic prints
CD-ROMs
International Design Conference
in Aspen
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